My teeth bloody themselves

Air punching my lungs like Venus, when Helen dared defy her

Adolescence plays go fish with identity, it’s not a card

Anymore, but it shuffled me topside bottom

Strewn with phalanges and metacarpals

Think smelly teenager, longhair jazz, pj days, hot cocoa

And eclecticism’s constant company

Jeans made my safety blanket

So I had two legs to run because, guess what?

Nightmares attack escape routes

Flattening chests and painting hair into hats

Not male, but anything other than female

My Aunt as a girl, asked God, tiny hands trembling:
“Make me a boy… Make me a boy,” she prayed

It's not safe
I hasn’t been safe, with bold bowled hips catching everything that falls

You don’t know what you’ll get

Awakening these sleeping beasts because

They believe women are not artists, only models

And I believed it

My aunt asked God to make her a boy

Genius spelling the heterogeneous X and Y

I believed it

My aunt begged God to make her a boy

Her feminist tones sing me wrong today:

“You are not weak,

You are woman!”

But sometimes...

Sometimes I still believe it